The Art of Donna Distefano By Sara Evans Ring by Donna Distefano, inspired by Dante’s vision of Paradise: “The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Ever since the first Neanderthal strung a shell around her neck, we have had the impulse to adorn ourselves. Jewelry doesn’t feed
By Valerie Andrews More details Colored engraving after Modern Woman: Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge or Science (1893) by Mary Cassatt (1844-1926). Mural for the Woman’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois Dear Reader, This issue is about the healing power of home—how we learn
Music has saved my life. Not just listening, but the act of playing, the intimacy of running fingers over polished keys. Whatever concerns I bring to the piano vanish as I lose myself in stormy contrasts of a Beethoven sonata, the exuberance of a Chopin mazurka, the lighthearted skipping of a Bach bourrée. For me, the piano has been many things–a solace in time of loss, a playground for improvisation, a prelude to a state of grace.
Dust lackadaisically spreads itself around the house as if it owned the place. As soon as the cloth has cleared the surface, a new cluster appears and thumbs its nose at us. With that first whisk of the feather duster, we whisper “Gotcha!” then moments later, we are pursuing these creatures as they dart around the room, engaged in that age-old game of hide-and-seek. Sometimes I wonder, is dust acting on a grudge, or expressing its own kind of constancy and devotion? Dust may be our silent partner in a lifelong courtship—and on the scales of Fate, what remains of all our good intentions.
Merwin writes about being alone in that empty house, and a conversation with his parents that, despite their passing, he would never finish.
Joe Biden comes to the presidency in one of the most polarized periods in American history. Lincoln had a similar task. What did he say to help the country heal?
For a passionate and prolific response to racism in America we turn to two extraordinary artists from the 1960s: Nina Simone and James Baldwin. Simone sang about Mississippi lynchings and Baldwin wrote about the profound abuse that Blacks suffered in the South. The two friends supported each other in the fight for Civil Rights.
They say that when you’re about to die your life flashes before you, you see those you love…I need no private cinematic bursts of my life and my loved ones. I can see them already and they are about to be murdered by the gun of a Zairian child soldier who stands at the doorway watching us.
What to do when the news is too much to bear? This summer ended with two mass shootings in a single day. These events left Americans feeling lost and helpless, wondering what we could to do to set things right. Here’s how home can be a lifeboat in uncertain times, providing comfort and serenity — and a place to gather strength.